1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for inputting characters using a touch screen in a portable terminal, and in particular, to an apparatus and method for inputting characters without errors.
2. Description of the Related Art
A portable terminal may be equipped with a touch screen and its major example is a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).
In general, the major components of the PDA are a computer, that is, a CPU (Central Processing Unit), a memory, and an OS (Operating System), and a variety of software programs and peripheral devices based on the OS. The PDA functions to gather, store, form, and search information. Recently, the PDA has been developed as a multi-functional device equipped with a portable phone module to enable voice calls and data communications (e.g., Web browsing).
One popular example of a PDA is the Palm Pilot produced by the Pam Computing Company, and other similar personal, portable digital devices are called PDA. Among products operating on Windows CE of Microsoft, a device using a pen without a keyboard is called PPC (Palm-Sizes PC) and a device using a keyboard is called HPC (Handheld PC). The term “PDA” includes all these devices.
The PDA is usually provided with a touch screen. A user inputs a character using a soft keyboard displayed on the touch screen. The user invokes an application program by touching an icon displayed on the touch screen with his/her finger or a stylus pen. Characters may be input by touching the soft keyboard displayed in a predetermined screen area.
A pocket-size device such as the PDA, however, experiences frequent character editing due to errors caused by the limited screen size. That is, the PDA has the shortcomings of inconvenience and unnecessary time consumption involved in frequent editing.